Holland is one bright guy, but perhaps his biggest talent lies in his ability to keep all this management talent happy and within the Detroit fold, despite numerous offers for many of them to go elsewhere. And this isn’t even to discuss their amateur scouting, which is constantly fending off raids from other teams.

If you want to know why Detroit has been so consistently good over the past 15 years, just take a good look at the club directory.

Again, while it is fun to speculate about Forsberg, in Gagne, the Flyers are already getting an All-Star impact player for the stretch run - one who is only going to get better and better as he works his way back into full condition.

“I think I’m in pretty good shape, but I want to get back to game shape, skillwise, get the legs back and all the quickness I had before,” Gagne said.

Hawks assistant general manager Rick Dudley was seen watching Tampa Bay play Monday.

With rumors of Nikolai Khabibulin being available, it’s only natural to connect the dots with the Lightning—Khabibulin’s former team and one that is last in the Eastern Conference largely because of poor goaltending.

As Lundqvist made the save, however, Rangers veteran Brendan Shanahan cross-checked Clarke MacArthur into the goalpost. That dislodged the net and caused a faceoff. It also raised the ire of Sabres coach Lindy Ruff.

“There should probably be a suspension on that last play,” Ruff said after the 2-1 loss in Madison Square Garden. “The league definitely has to look at it. That was a definite intent to try to hurt somebody. He could have a broken neck, he could have a broken shoulder, he could have a broken back, he could have a number of things….”

“It was harder than I would have wanted,” said Shanahan. “It certainly warranted a penalty. I’m glad the kid didn’t get hurt….”

Over at Abel to Yzerman they had a bit of fun over the last week or so testing out the new chat system we’ve been incorporating into KK. Everything seems to be working reasonably well, so now we’ve opened the rooms up on a permanent basis.

The KK Chat Rooms are an added feature for KK members. You can access them at any time by clicking the tab link along side the other KK sections at the top of any page. If you’re not a member, it’s free to register.

We’ve also added some new features since the original testing and we’ll probably make more adjustments as time goes on.

“It went well today,” Daly told The Canadian Press on Wednesday night. “We went through our respective views of what was transpiring and the possible causes. We share the same concern with respect to too many young players coming to North America before they are ready to play in the NHL. We talked about possible ways to address it. We have conceived of a possible short-term interim framework to give us more time for us to evaluate what’s going on in the market place.

“That framework is subject to all of the parties going back to their respective constituencies to discuss its merits.”

Earlier today, Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins participated in a teleconference for the NHL. Since the start of the ‘05, ‘06 season Marc has recorded 179 assists placing him in third in the NHL over that timeframe behind San Jose Joe Thornton with 228 and Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby with 190.

Here is the transcript of today’s Q&A session.

Q. Two questions actually. The first one is about the game on NBC Sunday. Just curious. Do you guys—I think it’s hard to say that you could get up more for one game than the other, but do you notice that the game’s on national TV and does it strike your awareness before the game, you know, the hype surrounding a national televised game or anything like that?

“The agent is still working on a deal with Don, hopefully we can work out the best of it. I hope I can stay. But obviously we know there are two choices, stay or going away. I’m preparing for both choices. The priority is I would like to stay here.”

added 5:53pm, Kevin Allen was just on WDFN radio in Detroit. He doesn’t think the Wings will go after Hossa, but you never know with the Wings. The Wings know in order to keep thei ball rolling, they need to hold onto draft picks and the younger players. He feels they will go after a mid-level player(s) at the deadline.

added 5:58pm, You can now listen to the full interview with Kevin Allen. If you can’t get the link to work, go to WDFN and you will find other options. Kevin discussed multiple trade scenes, talked Leafs a bit too.

Over the last year, we’ve seen the Hook Up perverted in so many ways. So many athletes attained the Hook Up, meaning they could do no wrong in the public’s eyes and even if they did, they’d be forgiven faster than you can say “Britney Spears is the white Whitney Houston.”...

Wayne Gretzky: Best player of all time, but coaching and part-owning the Phoenix Coyotes has yielded little for that franchise. The NHL didn’t even lift an eyebrow when the Great One was implicated in a gambling ring which his wife, Janet Jones, and former Coyotes general manager Michael Barnett. Nope, not a bad idea at all to have a guy associated with a gambling ring coaching and owning a professional hockey team.

About Kukla’s Korner

Kukla’s Korner is updated around the clock with the work of our own talented bloggers, plus links to the best hockey writing around the internet. We strive to bring you all the breaking hockey news as it happens.

The home page allows you to see the latest postings from every blog on the site. Subscribe here. For general inquiries and more, please contact us anytime.